'Light Goes On' - stunning video by light painter Darren Pearson

Darren Pearson is a 'light painter', who creates photographs and videos featuring elements that are 'painted' with light during long exposures. Most photographers have probably tried painting with light at least once, but Pearson takes it to a new level in his video 'Light Goes On', which features a skeleton (one of his common characters) drawn with light, skateboarding through various locations.

The character of the skeleton is 'painted' with a small flashlight. Light Goes On was created over the course of a year from 700 individual long-exposure images stitched together to make just over one minute of footage.

Comments

People that are posting negative comments obviously have never light painted before or are just frustrated at their lack of imagination and creativity. I watched this and was blown away. The thought that came to my mind was oh my god this was a lot of work and no way, that is impossible.

Bravo. What a treat. This is one of those aha moments. We have all dreamt of doing something like this but never figured out how and never did it... but you did. For that we are grateful..

Darren, you-da-ma my friend. I am inspired to go out there and create images every time I come across a piece of work like yours. Truly stunning work. I can only imagine how difficult it was and how much work it took.

I keep forwarding this to all my photographer friends for them to be inspired as well.

Keep them coming.

You should approach Nike or other sports companies, if you have not already. They can pay you to do more of this type of work.

At some points during the video, I think I see the silhouette of an obscured man behind the skeleton: could be the person who does the light painting with the small (probably bright LED) light.But when the skateboarding skeleton is on his way from A to B and suspended in mid air in the frames that constitute that movement, I am still puzzled how the man behind can be there long enough to do the painting (must be at least several seconds).Curious.I once tried it (much simpler) in a single shot and that was fun.Roel

The "obscured man" I would think is there since in these paintings the painter in in front of the camera. I would assume he maybe traces an image that is placed behind the camera and where it should be in the frame.

I find it extremely interesting and you are compelled to watch it all the way through, but it is very short and in my opinion could of done with other objects added into the video. For a more spectacular shoot. I do like it and hope they have something even better in the future... add more people doing horse riding, or fire juggling, and surfing, but with light..

Not very interesting? Heck, most people can't even draw a skeleton that well on paper! Let alone life size, in the air, in the dark, 700 times, in perfect succession, with frame-to-frame movement, *complex* movements, over the course of a year, to form a stop-motion animation.

I do not find babalu or Digitall's comments demeaning to the photographer presented here, nor as complaints. They are neutral facts and instructive only (the link to Picasso's "light paintings" was fascinating -- thanks, babalu). I don't understand the derisive responses.

Picasso may have but he didn't make a video of it that took over a year to compile. The idea may be old, but why don't we all just stop taking photos since every one before us already has.

Personally, I have a great deal of respect for the individual's dedication to getting the project done without abandoning it part way through. It's a nice idea and he should be credited as such. The persistence, alone, is worthy of praise.

Not too many people have an attention span that could see some thing like this through to the end.

Yeah, but did he do it 700 times in perfect succession to create a stop-motion animation? Pearson takes it to the next level, times 700! Not only that, Pearson's skeleton light drawing looks far, far better than Picasso's centaur.

Yes, sure. Picasso, compared to Daren Pearson (for whom I have great respect, by the way), was merely a primitive unimportant blotcher who just played with light like today's kids play with crayons in kindergarten .... <sigh> ...

@Buzz Lightyear, you are correct. And babalu put a nice link for comparasion, and why I said there is nothing new today. In this case 64 years ago someone already did this, This is not an invention, but a reinvention.but someone forgot to read the previous comment, when I said that the video shows a remarkable job. Everyone sees what they want to see, and interprets its own way. life goes on ;)

When I paint with light, I paint an object. So the object is in the scene, and during the long exposure I paint it with light from a flashlight. The object being painted is in the scene, the flashlight isn't.

But here it looks like the flashlight itself is the subject. I'm guessing he wore a dark outfit, went into the scene, drew the shapes in the air and then left the scene.

The mind boggles at how much effort this must have taken. Bet he got a lot of out-takes too!

well then,my Question is, why his comment is´nt necessarily sour grapes? and Why is it ` not´ jealously when one is giving a negative critique without showing something better of his own ,or atleast pointing someone else´s work which comes close? sure ,one does not necessarily follow the other.but then one does not always diss the `other´ either.;-) enjoy your corona with lime with coronawithlime ;-)))